California’s health care reform: "Just like in the Soviet Union"

California governator Arnold Schwarzenegger comes out swinging with a proposal to tax MDs 2% off their income to finance insurance scheme for all. From few, to all: just like in the Soviet Union. In addition, clinicians are assailed from all the other sides: managed care companies and insurance firms, trial lawyers, litigating patients, and populist politicians of both parties. As it becomes increasingly difficult to practice medicine, AMA says nothing of these assaults. And it does nothing. Instead, AMA and nine other “leading physician associations” came out yesterday with a list of principles for reforming the U.S. health care system that read like Brezhnev politburo’s talking points.